American Meritocracy is Failing Us...

5fish

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YES!! American Meritocracy is failing us and breeding some of the equality within our society... The more we look at the 20th century the more we see the sins of our fathers and us... the elites are the new aristocrats of the Plutocrats'...

Here is the first article...


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Meritocracy is the idea that people should get ahead based on their own accomplishments rather than, say, their parents’ social class, or their race, ethnicity, or gender. That idea is really hard to object to. And it’s not that we don’t have a good enough meritocracy, or that we have too little meritocracy, and that we’re failing to live up to the idea that people should get ahead based on their own accomplishments. But rather, it’s that we have too much of it. Once it gets established, that system ends up perpetuating inequality and being the central vehicle of class stratification. And even as it excludes most Americans from real opportunity, it also harms the few who seem to win. The basic idea is that meritocracy is the problem—it’s the disease, not the cure.

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The first thing that’s happened is that elite education has just exploded and taken off. And the thing about education is that when one person’s education gets better, it reduces the value of everybody else’s education.

A second thing that’s happened to the middle class is in the labor market. We have changed the way in which we make things and provide services to favor exactly the elaborate educations that rich kids now get.

The inequality in education, the inequality in the labor market—these are structural forms of inequality and exclusion. They’re based on big systems that make it impossible for individual people to fight against them.

But because the idea of meritocracy is that anybody can get ahead, and that you get ahead based on your own accomplishments, meritocracy then tells middle class people who are being structurally excluded, “It’s your fault! You’re not good enough; you didn’t try hard enough; you don’t have the skills needed.” It blames the people who are excluded, and characterizes them as failures
.

The next article...


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Today’s meritocrats still claim to get ahead through talent and effort, using means open to anyone. In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges.

snip... think of our kids...

Hardworking outsiders no longer enjoy genuine opportunity. According to one study, only one out of every 100 children born into the poorest fifth of households, and fewer than one out of every 50 children born into the middle fifth, will join the top 5 percent. Absolute economic mobility is also decliningthe odds that a middle-class child will outearn his parents have fallen by more than half since mid-century—and the drop is greater among the middle class than among the poor. Meritocracy frames this exclusion as a failure to measure up, adding a moral insult to economic injury.

The next article...


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In an engrossing passage from Twilight of the Elites, a new book about the American meritocracy and its failures, author Chris Hayes directs our attention to an all but forgotten moment in 2009, when debate raged about who President Obama should appoint to a Supreme Court vacancy. Sonia Sotomayor was widely thought to be on his short list. But various liberal commentators, including The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen and Harvard's Laurence Tribe, argued that she should be passed over for alternative candidates who they regarded as observably smarter. "Keep in mind the person under discussion is someone who, from humble beginnings in the Bronx, had gained entry to Princeton, graduated summa cum laude, and gone on to Yale Law, where she edited the Yale Law Journal," Hayes observed. "She had checked off every box on the to-do list of meritocratic achievement. Apparently it wasn't enough."

snip...

Hayes' theories are many:

  • Institutions designed to reward merit are being gamed by the privileged, who create a self-perpetuating elite. The most familiar example concerns admission to prestigious schools. Admissions tests like the SAT began as a high-minded reform. Applicants would be chosen for intellectual prowess and compete for their spot on a level playing field. Thanks to test prep, the rich get lots of time to practice on it, while even smart poor kids don't.
  • More broadly, inequality begets more inequality. "Those who climb up the ladder will always find a way to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies and kin to scramble up." Thus the astonishingly outsized gains seen at the very top of American society.
  • The intense competition inherent in meritocracy creates powerful incentives to cheat, and encourages the attitude that whatever you do in pursuit of dominance is fine as long as you profit or win. For example, at Enron traders who broke the law weren't punished if they were making money. And in Major League Baseball, everyone pretended that steroids weren't around.
  • When elites break the rules they aren't punished like regular people. They're bailed out of trouble, or spared criminal prosecution for their lawlessness. This is actually the subject of Glenn Greenwald's latest book.
  • There is too much social distance separating the people in charge with the folks subject to their decisions. Thus Catholic bishops who sympathized more with molesting priests than their victims, Senators who send men from a class they rarely encounter to fight the wars they approve, and the disaster planners who couldn't conceive of how the timing of Hurricane Katrina at the end of the month would affect the ability of poor residents to evacuate. There is a long history of Americans complaining about the gulf separating them from their leaders, from the 'distant, unresponsive' King George to the 'out-of-touch, inside-the-Beltway' politicians of today.
 

5fish

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Here is another look...


snip...

Yet, as this meritocratic elite has taken over institutions, trust in them has plummeted. It’s not even clear that the brainy elite is doing a better job of running them than the old boys’ network. Would we say that Wall Street is working better now than it did 60 years ago? Or government? The system is more just, but the outcomes are mixed. The meritocracy has not fulfilled its promise.

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In his book, “Twilight of the Elites,” he argues that meritocratic elites may rise on the basis of grades, effort and merit, but, to preserve their status, they become corrupt. They create wildly unequal societies, and then they rig things so that few can climb the ladders behind them. Meritocracy leads to oligarchy.

snip... one thought...

It’s a challenging argument but wrong. I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room.

snip...


The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.

Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code
. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this
 

5fish

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Here is this.... it seem Meritocracies only happen a few time in history....


snip...

Meritocracy (merit, from Latin mereō, and -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος kratos 'strength, power') is a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than wealth or social class.[1] Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement. Although the concept of meritocracy has existed for centuries, the term itself was coined in 1958 by the sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his dystopian political and satirical book The Rise of the Meritocracy
 

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Youth sports a victim of American meritocracy...

Snip...

But dig into the numbers, and a more complex, two-track story emerges. Among richer families, youth sports participation is actually rising. Among the poorest households, it’s trending down. Just 34 percent of children from families earning less than $25,000 played a team sport at least one day in 2017, versus 69 percent from homes earning more than $100,000. In 2011, those numbers were roughly 42 percent and 66 percent, respectively.

Snip...

In short, the American system of youth sports—serving the talented, and often rich, individual at the expense of the collective—has taken a metal bat to the values of participation and universal development. Youth sports has become a pay-to-play machine.

Declining athletic participation is a prime example of how the choices even benevolent rich households make can hurt poorer families—especially their children.
 

5fish

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Here is short book that will inform of our dying dreams... American Meritocracy is the top 20 percent not the one percenters... @Jim Klag , you like to defend American System... @Leftyhunter maybe owning guns is the only equalizer... @O' Be Joyful I know you are in the 20 percenters, @rittmeister I bet Germany has the same issues... @diane a first world issue...



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But the more important, and widening, gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else. Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn’t the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing, health care, and other necessary goods and services.


snip...

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

snip...

These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.

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The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child

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Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren’t the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system
 

5fish

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Here an article on the topic...


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In a new book, a Brookings scholar argues that the upper-middle class has enriched itself and harmed economic mobility.

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The book traces the way that the upper-middle class has pulled away from the middle class and the poor on five dimensions: income and wealth, educational attainment, family structure, geography, and health and longevity. The top 20 percent of earners might not have seen the kinds of income gains made by the top one percent and America’s billionaires. Still, their wage and investment increases have proven sizable. They dominate the country’s top colleges, sequester themselves in wealthy neighborhoods with excellent public schools and public services, and enjoy healthy bodies and long lives. “It would be an exaggeration to say that the upper-middle class is full of gluten-avoiding, normal-BMI joggers who are only marginally more likely to smoke a cigarette than to hit their children,” Reeves writes. “But it would be just that—an exaggeration, not a fiction.”

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They then pass those advantages onto their children, with parents placing a “glass floor” under their kids. They ensure they grow up in nice zip codes, provide social connections that make a difference when entering the labor force, help with internships, aid with tuition and home-buying, and schmooze with college admissions officers. All the while, they support policies and practices that protect their economic position and prevent poorer kids from climbing the income ladder: legacy admissions, the preferential tax treatment of investment income, 529 college savings plans, exclusionary zoning, occupational licensing, and restrictions on the immigration of white-collar professionals.

snip...

Reeves offers a host of policy changes that might make a considerable difference: better access to contraception, increasing building in cities and suburbs, barring legacy admissions to colleges, curbing tax expenditures that benefit families with big homes and capital gains. Still, given the scale of the problem, I wondered whether other, bigger solutions might be necessary as well: a universal child allowance to reduce the poverty rate among kids, as the Century Foundation has proposed, say, or baby bonds to help eliminate the black-white wealth gap fostered by decades of racist and exclusionary government policy, as Darrick Hamilton has suggested. (So often, the upper-middle class insulating and enriching itself at the expense of the working class has meant white families doing so at the expense of black families—a point I thought underplayed in Reeves’ telling.)

snip...

Members of the upper-middle class, as those viral stories show and Reeves writes, love to think of themselves as members of the middle class, not as the rich. They love to think of themselves as hard workers who played fair and won what they deserved, rather than as people who were born on third and think they hit a triple. They hate to hear that the government policies they support as sensible might be torching social mobility and entrenching an elite. That elite is them.
 

Leftyhunter

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Here is short book that will inform of our dying dreams... American Meritocracy is the top 20 percent not the one percenters... @Jim Klag , you like to defend American System... @Leftyhunter maybe owning guns is the only equalizer... @O' Be Joyful I know you are in the 20 percenters, @rittmeister I bet Germany has the same issues... @diane a first world issue...



View attachment 7399


snip...

But the more important, and widening, gap in American society is between the upper middle class and everyone else. Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn’t the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing, health care, and other necessary goods and services.


snip...

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

snip...

These trends matter because the separation and perpetuation of the upper middle class corrode prospects for more progressive approaches to policy. Various forms of “opportunity hoarding” among the upper middle class make it harder for others to rise up to the top rung. Examples include zoning laws and schooling, occupational licensing, college application procedures, and the allocation of internships. Upper middle class opportunity hoarding, Reeves argues, results in a less competitive economy as well as a less open society.

snip...

The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child

snip...

Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren’t the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system
There may come a time when people are willing to fight and did vs being a hamster spinning a wheel and not getting anywhere. There was a lot of violence last summer and that could be mainly because many people know that there not going anywhere fast . If hard working people continue to hit the wall maybe a violent revolution or civil war is not such a bad option.
Leftyhunter
 

5fish

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I have brought your attention our rising Gini Coefficient as high as Mexico only our nation's total wealth keeps us from having shanty towns everywhere but they are coming... This great inequality comes form the super wealthy being wealth hoarders and our new aristocracy of meritocracy being opportunity hoarders... Our Empire is failing, slowly...
 

5fish

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Here is an article implying the meritocrats are killing the earth with their blind ambition.... Our meritocracy ethos is spreading across the world...

https://theweek.com/articles/869167/meritocracy-killing

More than a century ago, sociologist Max Weber identified a mindset he called the "Protestant Ethic," a secularized but "entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational" drive for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. People who adopt this ethic are so focused on the endless grind for success that they can no longer identify or prioritize their own needs or those of society as a whole. As Daniel Markovits recently wrote at The Atlantic, "Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry but never finding, or even knowing, the right food."

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This drive seeps into and permeates meritocrats' projects: The companies they run and the governments they head prioritize ever-rising profits and GDP regardless of any costs to human relationships or ecosystems. They churn out plastic packaging and reduce caps on emissions because taking steps to reduce waste and pollution would tarnish the bottom line. That's seen as a loss, and meritocrats are blinded by their need to win. This is where meritocracy becomes an existential threat to all of us.

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In the face of this worldwide crisis, an individualistic quest for money and power is a bizarre way to live. Perhaps meritocrats have a rational motive for their single-minded pursuits. Maybe they want their children to have enough money to escape the disasters that are going to befall the rest of us. But it's more likely that the real explanation is they're too busy hustling to stop and really think things through. It's probably going to fall to the rest of us to stop them before their striving destroys us all.
 

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Here an argument about European Meritocrats... @rittmeister , @Wehrkraftzersetzer , @alexjack , @jgoodguy , @O' Be Joyful , @Jim Klag it seems mobility...


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It should seem obvious that meritocracy — a system in which the most talented and capable, the best educated, those who score highest on the tests, are put in leading positions — is better than plutocracy, gerontocracy, aristocracy and, perhaps, even the rule of the majority, democracy.

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But Europe’s meritocratic elites aren’t hated simply because of populists’ bigoted stupidity or the confusion of ordinary people. Michael Young, the British sociologist who in the middle of the last century coined the term “meritocracy,” would not be surprised by the turn of events. He was the first to explain that even though “meritocracy” might sound good to most people, a meritocratic society would be a disaster. It would create a society of selfish and arrogant winners, and angry and desperate losers. The triumph of meritocracy, Young understood, would lead to a loss of political community

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What makes meritocrats so unbearable to their critics is not so much their success but their insistence that they have succeeded because they worked harder than others, because they happened to be more qualified than others and because they passed the tests that others failed

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The paradox of the current political crisis in Europe is rooted in the fact that the Brussels elites are blamed for the same reasons that they praised themselves for: their cosmopolitanism, their resistance to public pressure and their mobility

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In Europe, the meritocratic elite is a mercenary elite, not unlike the way the best soccer players are traded around to the most successful clubs across the Continent. Successful Dutch bankers move to London; competent German bureaucrats move to Brussels. European institutions and banks, just like soccer clubs, spend colossal amounts of money acquiring the best “players.” Usually, this system means victories on the pitch or in the central bank’s boardroom
.

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In the eyes of the meritocratic elites, their success outside of their country is a proof of their talents, but in the eyes of many people, this very mobility is a reason not to trust them. People trust their leaders not only because of their competence but also because of their courage and commitment, and because they believe that their leaders will remain with their own in times of crisis rather than being helicoptered to the emergency exit. Paradoxically, it is the convertible competencies of the present elites, the fact that they are equally fit to run a bank in Bulgaria or in Bangladesh or to teach in Athens or Tokyo, that make people so suspicious of them. People fear that in times of trouble, the meritocrats will opt to leave instead of sharing the cost of staying.

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Unsurprisingly then, it is loyalty — namely the unconditional loyalty to ethnic, religious or social groups — that is at the heart of the appeal of Europe’s new populism. Populists promise people not to judge them based solely on their merits. They promise solidarity but not necessarily justice. Unlike a century ago, today’s popular leaders aren’t interested in nationalizing industries. Instead, they promise to nationalize the elites. They do not promise to save the people but to stay with them. They promise to re-establish the national and ideological constraints that were removed by globalization. In short, what populists promise their voters is not competence but intimacy. They promise to re-establish the bond between the elites and the people. And many in Europe today find this promise appealing.

snip...

The American philosopher John Rawls spoke for many liberals when he argued that being a loser in a meritocratic society was not as painful as being a loser in an openly unjust society. In his conception, the fairness of the game would reconcile people with failure. Today it looks as if the great philosopher may have been wrong






 

rittmeister

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Here an argument about European Meritocrats... @rittmeister , @Wehrkraftzersetzer , @alexjack , @jgoodguy , @O' Be Joyful , @Jim Klag it seems mobility...

my dear mr fish, if americans believe we have meritocracies (which are already declining) in europe they err. to this day nobility and/or wealth give you a headstart in life. if we are lucky we'll arive at a meritocracy some day. the example of professors ugur sahin* and özlem türeci* shows that we might be on the right track but most of the way is still ahead of us. to form a true meritocracy you need time and some sort of equalizer as professors sahin and türeci's kid will obviously have a headstart moneywise, too. socialism (at least what's on offer so far as socialism on this planet) is not the answer - the socialism of star trek might work, though.

... the us never were a meritocracy as your constitution is tailored to favour the rich from day one on - unfortunately this document can't be brought into the 21st century without tearing it apart.

---

* i named him first for the sole reason that he's more widely known
 

5fish

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America never
America never was WHAT?...


meritocracy as your constitution is tailored to favour the rich from day one
I think I can argument your Technocratic governments are just meritocratic governments...


Snip...

Technocracy is a system of government in which a decision-maker or makers are elected by the population or appointed on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy, the notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government,[1] though it does not necessarily imply eliminating elected representatives. Decision-makers are selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than political affiliations or parliamentary skills.[2]
 

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I think I can argument your Technocratic governments are just meritocratic governments...


Snip...

Technocracy is a system of government in which a decision-maker or makers are elected by the population or appointed on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy, the notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government,[1] though it does not necessarily imply eliminating elected representatives. Decision-makers are selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than political affiliations or parliamentary skills.[2]
... and where do europeans have that other than in moments when a parliament is stuck?
 

5fish

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where do europeans have that other than in moments
In general many think European Nations are run by Technocrats...


In Europe, there is a particularly acute version of this symbiosis—not least because of the EU, which is perhaps the ultimate experiment in technocratic governance. In a sense, depoliticization is the essence of what the EU does. This symbiosis between technocrats and populists plays out along the fault line between pro-Europeans and euroskeptics. In recent years, the momentum seemed to be with the populists, as the much-used metaphor of a wave suggested.

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In recent decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of technocratic modes of governance. Powers that were previously held by national parliaments have been ceded to courts, central banks, and supranational institutions. This shift was, in part, a deliberate move by national governments to regulate highly technical policy areas and maintain price stability. It was also, in part, a consequence of hyperglobalization and the proliferation of international treaties and organizations in the past forty years.

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What is generally called populism can be understood as a response to this expansion of depoliticized forms of decisionmaking. As technocratic governance has expanded, it has led to a backlash—as Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has put it, “an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.” The rise of populism, in turn, leads to the further expansion of technocratic governance as elites seek to insulate decisionmaking from politicians who are perceived as irresponsible or irrational. In short, there is a symbiotic relationship between technocracy and populism
.
 

rittmeister

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In general many think European Nations are run by Technocrats...


In Europe, there is a particularly acute version of this symbiosis—not least because of the EU, which is perhaps the ultimate experiment in technocratic governance. In a sense, depoliticization is the essence of what the EU does. This symbiosis between technocrats and populists plays out along the fault line between pro-Europeans and euroskeptics. In recent years, the momentum seemed to be with the populists, as the much-used metaphor of a wave suggested.

snip...

In recent decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of technocratic modes of governance. Powers that were previously held by national parliaments have been ceded to courts, central banks, and supranational institutions. This shift was, in part, a deliberate move by national governments to regulate highly technical policy areas and maintain price stability. It was also, in part, a consequence of hyperglobalization and the proliferation of international treaties and organizations in the past forty years.

snip...

What is generally called populism can be understood as a response to this expansion of depoliticized forms of decisionmaking. As technocratic governance has expanded, it has led to a backlash—as Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has put it, “an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.” The rise of populism, in turn, leads to the further expansion of technocratic governance as elites seek to insulate decisionmaking from politicians who are perceived as irresponsible or irrational. In short, there is a symbiotic relationship between technocracy and populism
.
sorry but that's bullshit - every country gets their comissioner is anything but technocrats govt it's pork barrel politics at it's finest - it would be technocratic if those supranational courts , banks or whatever wouldn't be manned by pork barrel politics - eu consultations are more about bringing home the bacon than anything else - ursula von der leyen was on no ballot during the last eu elections how do you think she became the boss? it certainly has got nothing to do with competance of any kind.
 

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sorry but that's bullshit - every country gets their comissioner is anything but technocrats govt it's pork barrel politics at it's finest - it would be technocratic if those supranational courts , banks or whatever wouldn't be manned by pork barrel politics - eu consultations are more about bringing home the bacon than anything else - ursula von der leyen was on no ballot during the last eu elections how do you think she became the boss? it certainly has got nothing to do with competance of any kind.
the govt of every member country proposes someone for comissioner (mostly a personal ally who needs a good job or a personal enemy who needs to be taken out of the local bigwhig) and than the haggling starts as to who gets what - an expert on fishery may end up with steel and coal because that carries more prestige.

our public servants are mostly technocrats but that was the case since we started to appoint public servants.
 

Jim Klag

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the us never were a meritocracy as your constitution is tailored to favour the rich from day one on - unfortunately this document can't be brought into the 21st century without tearing it apart.
However, in the USA we all have the opportunity through our own efforts to join the rich - which, by definition, is meritocracy. It uused to be called the American Dream, but 5fish and his fellow debby-downer socialists have tarnished that term. 5fish and his fellow travelers have made "work" into something ugly. I worked very hard my whole career because I believed that was how to put my family and me in a position to enjoy the rest of our lives. 5fish, et. al., think they are owed something without work - that the people who worked hard should be required to share with them. I say get over it. I owe you nothing.
 
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